I will be talking about this at 5 pm on Matt Cooper . These are my initial thoughts.
Ragdal - I will add that to the list.
Brendan
This is a big fine, so it’s very welcome on the face of it
€32m for 2,007 customers
A total of 40,000 were affected.
Does that mean that the total fines will be €600m?
Was there a deliberate and systematic attempt to deprive people of their trackers e.g. a system error which charged no break fee?
If so the fine is justified.
But , why is no one being fined personally?
Someone made these decisions or errors. Some committee did that plan. So, why is there no one named? There were a lot of bad things done, but why has no individual been sanctioned?
Who will pay the fine and who will benefit?
The cost will be just passed on to customers in terms of higher mortgage rates
What did ptsb do wrong?
- When the Ombudsman and High Court found against them, they went to the Supreme Court. That was outrageous. Particularly since the High Court judge , Mr Justice Hogan had said
43. This, undoubtedly, is a sophisticated and clever argument which, for example, had it been advanced in an undergraduate law examination would have attracted high praise from the examiners as an original demonstration of legal craft and skill.
But this type of argument should really have no place in the construction of financial documents involving retail customers
- Did they engineer an error to encourage people to break out of their fixed rate early so that they would lose their rights to a tracker?
- This Special Condition 706 issue. They conceded the lower tracker rate only to those customers who complained. They should have given it to everyone affected by the issue.
What did they do right?
- They were the most efficient at doing the redress scheme. They finished first.
What about people who are still in dispute with ptsb?
- There are thousands of customers who were put on a tracker rate of 3.25% . They dispute that rate.
Incorrect legal interpretation of contractual terms and conditions: PTSB denied certain customers their enduring contractual right to a tracker mortgage as a result of PTSB’s incorrect interpretation of the extent of certain customers’ contractual entitlements.
Is that the basis for a fine? The Ombudsman rules every day against Financial Institutions. That doesn’t mean that they should be given a fine?